segunda-feira, março 07, 2005: Life in the Spin Cycle

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Spin is not just a technique. It is not just a political phenomenon. It permeates our culture and our daily life. And it's an industry -- almost a sector of the economy. That one day's stories quoted lobbyists, public relations specialists and professional "damage control" experts. If computers and communications go by the acronym "IT," for information technology, the perceptual industry might be "MT," for misinformation technology.

The business of MT isn't lying. It's shaping perceptions irrespective of the truth. Reality is a consideration, of course. But if reality were sufficient, we wouldn't need spin -- would we?

Reporters, whose job is to describe reality, rightly regard spin as an important part of the reality they are supposed to report. Good reporters describe both the real reality and the alternative reality. But even good ones often show no hint of preference as between the stage set and the real thing. If they did, that might be considered bias, I suppose.

It takes real excess of spin -- such as the president putting a practicing pundit on the payroll or the governor of California sending a fake newscast to real TV stations -- to generate much outrage in the press. Who knows what level of artifice would be needed to offend the general population, many of whom assume that the news is made up anyway.

All this sits oddly with the concurrent fashion for "transparency." The word is everywhere. It means what used to be called "truth" and also openness.

Transparency is a value? Five years ago, that idea would have been incomprehensible, like saying, "One of our values is suede." The transparency metaphor is inexact. It is not that people should be able to see right through you. It is that they should be able to see through to the real you.

But how do we resolve the apparent contradiction between our desire for transparency everywhere, and our tolerance or even approval of spin? The whole point of spin is opaqueness: a no-see-through skin of your own design between the real you and the outside world.

The solution, of course, is to spin your transparency. Make it look like you're transparent. And no doubt there are transparency consultants who will, for a fee, advise you about how to create an appearance of transparency so opaque that no one can see through it.

The dazzling sociologist Erving Goffman used to write essays and books with titles like "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life," arguing that we are all actors in a play of our own devising. All sincerity is calculation, as he saw it, and every statement or gesture is layered with strategy.

Goffman died at age 60 in 1982. He had no idea.

washingtonpost.com: Life in the Spin Cycle, By Michael Kinsley

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